Sunny Days in May

Posted on May 23, 2007

For many of us, last weekend was a long weekend. Not for me though. I had to work every day of this long long weekend. However, I was off yesterday and today, and also blessed with two wonderfully warm and sunny days to dispose of as I please. It was a wonderful day to take on a project. So I decided to sew the curtain I had been planning to make to separate my bedroom and the living room. A couple weeks ago I found this wonderful fabric, red satin, at Plaza St-Hubert. I got a great deal on it too which is just fantastic. So I sat there and did that. It was pretty successful I’d day, but the fabric was pretty hard to work with so the end result is not as perfect as I would’ve liked. But it’s pretty nonetheless. Then I had a meeting with the head of the French department at McGill to further discuss my taking on of the M.A. Since the transit is in strike, I biked down for the meeting. It was a wonderful idea. The ride was great. Afterwards, I happened to be in the neighborhood of my friend Jon, so I dropped by. Not long after, his friend Robbie happened to drop by as well. We were hungry so we went for a walk in search of food. We got some pitas and then decided to head down to Archambault to buy the new Stars CD which was released yesterday. I ended up spending way too much money and bought 4 wonderful CDs. Got the new Stars-Do You Trust Your Friends? (which is excellent), a new and disapointing Jeff Buckley compilation, The National- The Boxer, and a new double CD release of Elliott Smith’s songs- New Moon.
Then we went for a walk in the village and had just a fabulous time. It was the most fun I’d had in a while. I also bought a fabulous new back polka-dot dress which I deleriously love!
Then I headed on home and had a great ride back up. Olivia came over after with a bottle of wine for girl talk and a movie.
What a great perfect day it was!
Today, on the agenda, we have laundry, coffee at Esperanza, and random bumming around.

How will YOU cope with the transit strike?

Posted on May 22, 2007

Day off #2

Posted on May 18, 2007

Today was day off #2.
Started off at 7 AM. Yeah. You gotta be crazy to get up at that silly hour on your day off… I know. Like I said yesterday, my sister was in town last night with her friend Cathy on their way to Western Canada. So they wanted to get an early start, hoping to make their way to Thunder Bay for tonight. So we got up at 7 AM.
There was minor hanging in the morning. Mostly them getting ready and me watching them.
Then there was shower. It was fuckin cold in here today (had to pull out the winter jacket), so I had to turn on the heat. Yeah. A week ago I was praying for air conditioning and today I had to turn the heat on.
Then I finished reading The Birth House. A fabulous book! (http://www.thebirthhouse.com/).
Then I had a meeting with an old prof of mine to discuss the option of going back to school to do my M.A. So the discussion was pretty great. After a week of hair-pulling-pondering over what my life would look like, I finally got some answers. And this, this seemed like a pretty exciting project. Super-mega-exciting actually. So I decided to go for it! We’ve got some great ideas on the go and I can’t wait to get started. So that was a BIG HUUUUUUUGE decision…but I did it. And it was painless really. Once I realized that this was it, there was no more hair pulling at all. It just sorta fell into place. So next week I’m meeting with the head of the department to discuss other details.
So I’m feeling pretty liberated.

Days like this…

Posted on May 17, 2007

So today I was off…first day of the weekend for me.
I had a wicked ol’ time finishing to put up stuff on my walls. My sister is passing through town tonight and I wanted the place to look nice for her. So I figured I had to get the frames out of the way and onto the walls. I doesn’t really look the way I want it to though, So I’m thinking, new apartment, new decor! I’m gonna work on getting the colours a bit more coordinated and moving some of the old shit out little by little. It’s a slow slope, but I’m gonna get to it.
Also managed to capture all the millions of dust-bunnies laying around the floors. It was a sorry sight and a treacherous battle. See, the good thing with capets is you don’t see the dust accumulating. But with wooden floors, damn! Makes you wonder how much skin you can actually loose in three weeks. Cuz that’s where they come from, right? Gross!!!
Also baked some banana bread. What a disaster that was. I’m a lousy baker. I put the grill up too high and the top charred before the bread could actually cook. At first I thought it was just cooking real quick, but then I turned it over and saw a jiggle. That’s when I realised it wasn’t cooked at all. Damn! So I turned it over in the pan and cooked it some more upside down. It did the trick. It tastes pretty good… but the whole deal was a mess. Shitty baker I am. Not quite ready to be a housewife just yet.
Anyway…that’s all I feel like writing for now…

My new neighborhood

Posted on May 11, 2007

So yesterday I went for a walk through Little Italy with my friend Andrea and we ended up at the Market. The market is pretty much the culminating point of this new pad of mine. It’s there. All the time. I can go even during the weekdays (which is not something I did when I lived far far away. We also went for coffee. It was nice. I just realized the other day that I was basically IN Little Italy. Funny thing, cuz a while back, when I first started looking for an apartment, I pictured this perfect apartment in Little Italy. But then I realized that they were pretty expensive around there and most places that weren’t, weren’t conveniently located. So that dream kinda faded away and was later replaced by the Mile-End dream, which was just as unrealistic. But it’s so funny that I ended up right here, between the two of these ideal places I had pictured. This is perfect, seriously. Then I came home and had a bubble bath. You know when there’s so many bubbles that you jump in and you get lost in all of them. That’s how many bubbles there were. It was wonderful.
But while we were at the market, I bought this Hibiscus plant. I had been looking at those all last summer, and the summer before for that matter. It’s my favorite flower. It’s so beautiful. And now I have my very own! Yay!

Say Bye-Bye!!

Posted on May 8, 2007

So yesterday, I went to the grocery store in Little Italy (a block away) in search of ground beef. I have all these nice little grocery stores around my new neighbourhood, but none of them seem to sell anything else than lunch meats. So I went on a little adventure. Tried one. No luck. Tried another. Neither. Well I did find brocoli, yogurt, 100w light bulbs and coffee. So I made my way to the counter to pay for the previous. $11.41. I pull out my wallet. Next thing I know I hear something crash on the floor. I look down. And there it was. Sad little talking machine laying broken on the grocery store floor. When I first bent down to pick it up, I didn’t realize it was in two separate pieces. I grabbed the first part and then realized something was wrong. It was strangely light and didn’t feel in my hand as it had before. It was only half of it. And no. The wires weren’t still attached. Nope. Fuckin broken, BIG TIME!

Oh.
Uhm.
It broke I tell the teller.
“That happened to me once she says” not realizing the gravity of this situation.
But I have no home phone I tell her. Shit. This is fuckin awful! What the hell am I going to do.
…
$11.41.
I tried to pull myself together. But I guess it took a while. It took like hours. In my mind it did anyway. Fuckin hours to bounce back (it didn’t bounce. Just a single fatal crash).

A couple weeks ago, as I walked out of the Brûlerie after getting fired, I called my friend Jasmine. I desperately wanted a smoke (I think I had decided to take back smoking a week previous to that) and my fingers were frozen. It dropped on the concrete sidewalk and still worked. The spring action got a little eager, but that was it. This time though, the grocery store floor proved to be unforgiving.

So it was Sunday. And I still had no ground beef for my Sheppherd’s Pie. And now no phone. And standing there in my new neighborhood, not knowing where to find one of these goddamn Espace Bell. And I don’t even have a phone to call and see where I can find one. So I decide to go to the Market and see if I can find some ground beef. I’m upset. I’m troubled. I’m mainly stressed as I no longer have a freakin phone. And then the light starts blinking. I have a message. Weird! Funny that it can still detect that I have a message. I went to a phone booth to listen to it. It was work. … Yeah. What’s so wrong about that? What’s so wrong with that is that I don’t even have my freakin work number as I kept it safely into my phonebook ON MY PHONE! So then it dawned on me. I no longer have ANY of the phone numbers I used to have. No more numbers. I had to get a new phone. And time was running out as it was a Sunday afternoon and my chances of finding an Espace Bell open were already pretty slim, and getting slimmer as five o’clock drew near.

I went home. Got on the internet (thank god I’ve at least got that connected! It would’ve been tragic had Bell’s incompetence lasted one more week and I would’ve been stuck with no means of communication with the outside world whatsoever) and found an Espace Bell. No. It wasn’t even in Montreal. It was in St-fuckin-Leonard. Like three buses away. I could make it. I made my way there. It was a mall. I get to the mall. I couldn’t find it. I started to panic. Then I see it. The glorious blue and yellow banner. And to my disaray, I realize that the windows are boarded up. Coming soon…some fuckin clothing store for teenagers. Dammit!!!! I ask the concierge where it went. He says “gone away”. Fuck! I grab my hair and start pulling. I’m about to cry. Then I see a security guard. I figured he might come in handy as I tried to kill myself with the severed wires of my broken telephone. Maybe he could hold one end while I jabbed the other into my wrists. Instead, I opted to ask him if he had any idea what universe Espace Bell might’ve flown off to. “right after Yellow”. “After Yellow? How far is that? I don’t have much time”. “Oh, it’s right after the pharmacy on this side of the street.”. Thanks brown shirted man. $250 later, after having bought the cheapest, with the least amount of bells and whistles, closest thing to my old phone, I walked out of there. Pink phone in hand. yes….it’s freakin pink. Wanna fight about it?!

So there ya go.

The moral of this story: don’t drop your cell phone. It costs an arm to replace it.
AND…you’re all gonna have to give me your numbers again, as I now have to start a fresh list of numbers.

The Grand Tour

Posted on May 6, 2007

As some of you may have heard, I recently moved into a new apartment. It’s been crazy really. I’ve been in my own moving bubble for the past three weeks. First packing, then moving, then unpacking and getting settled in. Now it’s time for you all to see what it all amounts to. Above is the kitchen viewed from the far corner of the dining room.
This is the kitchen. …and the pancakes.
My ginormous bathroom.
Kitchen and dining room viewed from the far corner of the kitchen.
Bedroom
Living room (and my new futon)
Bedroom again
Hallway. At the left you have the main entrance door. At the right my bedroom door and in the far end the entrance to the dining room.
Living room again, viewed from the other side.

So yah, there you have it. My new pad. Hope you all enjoyed the tour.

P.S. I still need to hang my frames up… I need help. A hand would be much appreciated.